Broadcast Social Media Marketing - A Slippery Slope
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Have you been tempted to outsource your social media marketing? Particularly, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?
By all means, I understand the desire to outsource social media to another company who already has the content for accounting firms and is willing to post this regularly on your behalf. However, this is a very slippery slope given everything that Google is doing to monitor and determine who is posting original versus duplicate content. In other words, Google is seeking to reward those that write and share great original content while putting those who post duplicate (or copy/steal someone else's article) content into a penalty box. In other words, Google views duplicate content as spam and will penalize your website visibility by ceasing to display your website if they believe your content is the same as found elsewhere on the internet.
Stepping back even further, social media was designed as a two-way medium so you can share information back and forth kinda like a dialogue that you have socially. It is not intended to be used as a one-way broadcast medium like television, radio, and even email newsletters.
Outsourcing your social media?
If you want to outsource your social media marketing to a boutique social media company, I totally understand that. There are some companies that excel at social media and can elevate the image of your accounting firm in social media rather than doing it yourself. At Build Your Firm, we offer social media as part of our Content Marketing in a Box program which offers social media marketing services for accountants.
Conversely, I would discourage you from outsourcing your social media marketing to a firm that posts the exact same content on behalf of hundreds (or thousands) of accounting firms in a broadcast manner. You want someone who will take some time to get to know your firm and post things relevant to your services. Broadcasting or syndicating social media not only violates Google's duplicate content guidelines but it comes across like a person at a party who talks endlessly and doesn't care about a two-way dialogue and exchange of information. This is the impression that your prospects have when you use a broadcast social media approach. My advice, resist the urge to blast social media because the upside for social media marketing does not offset the downside for lowering your website visibility.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube...which ones should your firm be on. I discourage you from attempting to tackle them all. If you try to do all the social medias you'll end up doing them all poorly. Instead, focus on 1-2 platforms you're comfortable with and do them well.
If you don't have the time to invest in social media, that's understandable and acceptable. It's not a big deal. However, don't spam your friends and clients with social media blasts. It is what it is and even Google sees it as spam.
